# Ep. 855: Clay's Utah Mountain Lion Hunt | 12 in '26

An episode of [The MeatEater Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/960902903), 31 Mar 2026, 1 h 11 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/63aba8bc-2dc8-4f89-807a-ae280065a7cd/1d5f44a3-3fe5-4c86-bbda-b41d0189f457/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=3892b9a1-a960-4f9e-bee7-ae280065a7db

Clay Newcomb answers your questions and breaks down his Utah mountain lion hunt captured in MeatEater's brand new "12 in '26" film series. He hunts with mules and hounds in the mountains, testing his fortitude in some seriously steep and rugged terrain. Presented by @Moultrie.Products and @onXHunt Watch the film now on MeatEater's YouTube channel Connect with MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and YouTube Clips Subscribe to MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:04] Speaker 1: Wow, what a beautiful animal. God get just to get
[0:08] Speaker 1: a few moments to just watch that animal. Few people
[0:12] Speaker 1: in the world will ever get to do that. You
[0:15] Speaker 1: can be out. You can be out in this country
[0:17] Speaker 1: your whole life, hiking, riding the mule, whatever. You might
[0:22] Speaker 1: see a mountainlying in a lifetime. You know they're just
[0:25] Speaker 1: you just don't see them. The only way you're gonna
[0:28] Speaker 1: see them and look at them like this right here
[0:30] Speaker 1: is with hunting with these dogs. And we are a
[0:35] Speaker 1: long ways from the truck, miles and miles in back
[0:39] Speaker 1: country from the truck.
[0:43] Speaker 2: Man.
[0:43] Speaker 1: When when I see an animal like that, I think
[0:46] Speaker 1: about the country it came from. I mean, this is
[0:49] Speaker 1: some true back country and that sucker is made of
[0:53] Speaker 1: living out here his whole life. What you just heard
[0:58] Speaker 1: was a clip from my new film out on the
[1:00] Speaker 1: med Eater YouTube channel of my lion hunt on Mules
[1:05] Speaker 1: with some very legendary guys McLain and Hunter Meekham and
[1:10] Speaker 1: Ty Evans. We're gonna talk a ton about them. But
[1:13] Speaker 1: this was episode two of Meet Eaters twelve and twenty
[1:16] Speaker 1: six series. So Meet Eaters always putting out videos. Every
[1:20] Speaker 1: week we put out videos, but this year we're putting
[1:23] Speaker 1: out twelve long form films. Everyone films, not episodes, not videos,
[1:31] Speaker 1: not clips. Films, Yeah, Yannis, Yeah, Me and Jannis have
[1:36] Speaker 1: this argument going on of are we making episodes? Yannis
[1:41] Speaker 1: makes episodes. I make films, right, I think Jannis makes films.
[1:47] Speaker 1: Jiannis is incredible. This is meters twelve and twenty six
[1:51] Speaker 1: and the twelve twelve meaning twelve months of the year
[1:54] Speaker 1: twenty six being the year of twenty twenty six. We're
[1:58] Speaker 1: producing twelve full length feature films. This film that we
[2:03] Speaker 1: just released to mine is forty five minutes long. Giannis's
[2:06] Speaker 1: first film about his baited bear hunt. The first twelve
[2:08] Speaker 1: and twenty six was a full hour long. And these
[2:11] Speaker 1: are presented by our sponsors, our big time friends products
[2:16] Speaker 1: we use in the woods all the time on X
[2:19] Speaker 1: and Moultrie. And this is the Companion podcast, the Companion
[2:24] Speaker 1: Show called the twelve and twenty six podcast. That's where
[2:28] Speaker 1: all this has been going, folks, ever since you started.
[2:31] Speaker 1: This is the twelve and twenty six podcast, right, that's right,
[2:34] Speaker 1: the Companion Show to the twelve and twenty six film
[2:37] Speaker 1: series where we go behind the scenes. You know, I've
[2:41] Speaker 1: always been a big fan of long form audio like podcasts,
[2:47] Speaker 1: because when I started making films, you can go on
[2:51] Speaker 1: some big expedition and make a twenty minute film and
[2:55] Speaker 1: it really doesn't It honestly doesn't capture the full story.
[3:00] Speaker 1: If you were just sitting there listening to me talking. Now,
[3:02] Speaker 1: if you're just listening to me talk, you're not seeing
[3:05] Speaker 1: the lion, You're not seeing the mountains. You're not you're
[3:08] Speaker 1: not You're kind of in the moment in a different.
[3:11] Speaker 2: Way at all your senses, right.
[3:14] Speaker 1: But I feel like a film sometimes doesn't capture the
[3:19] Speaker 1: full thing. So what we're trying to do is just
[3:21] Speaker 1: like fill in all the gaps. So you got the film,
[3:23] Speaker 1: you can watch it. You can see the mules, you
[3:25] Speaker 1: can see the lions. We tread three lions. But spoiler alert,
[3:30] Speaker 1: this is behind the scenes. Yeah, I'm gonna tell you,
[3:33] Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna spill it all, folks. It's all
[3:37] Speaker 1: gonna be on the table on this episode of the
[3:41] Speaker 1: twelve and twenty six podcast. I'm joined by my dear
[3:44] Speaker 1: friend and producer Josh Landbridge spillmaker. And if some of
[3:49] Speaker 1: you might be if you're not tuned into Bear Grease
[3:53] Speaker 1: all the time, you might not know that Josh. I
[3:56] Speaker 1: gave Josh this nickname. I mean like in two thousand
[3:59] Speaker 1: and eight, a long time ago, like probably twenty years ago.
[4:02] Speaker 1: I started calling Landbridge because he's got such a good
[4:05] Speaker 1: mustache that this is a true story. One day we
[4:10] Speaker 1: go to church together. At church, I saw Josh and
[4:13] Speaker 1: I was inspired to go learn about the baring land
[4:16] Speaker 1: Bridge and went and ordered my first book on the
[4:19] Speaker 1: Bearing Land Bridge. I still got it inspired by this
[4:21] Speaker 1: because inspired by Josh's mustache, because it's like links continents.
[4:27] Speaker 1: So Josh Landbridge filmmaker. It was deep in the weeds
[4:31] Speaker 1: on the Bear Greege podcast with me so awesome.
[4:34] Speaker 2: Well, Clay, this was this was a fantastic film.
[4:37] Speaker 3: Man.
[4:37] Speaker 2: I'm really excited to kind of get into it. Hear
[4:39] Speaker 2: your thoughts on this specific hunt, lion hunting in general.
[4:43] Speaker 2: And we've got some great questions from me and some
[4:48] Speaker 2: great questions from some of our social media outlets, YouTube
[4:52] Speaker 2: and Instagram. So we're gonna throw it all at you
[4:55] Speaker 2: and give you an opportunity to respond. So kind of
[4:58] Speaker 2: just getting into it.
[4:59] Speaker 1: Can I do a preamble? You can't what every preamble
[5:02] Speaker 1: I just did?
[5:03] Speaker 2: Yep.
[5:04] Speaker 1: I just want to I want to like set the
[5:06] Speaker 1: wider picture for dry ground lion hunting, so you're gonna
[5:10] Speaker 1: hear that term used, and that what that means is
[5:14] Speaker 1: is when you're when you're hunting lions. Ninety nine percent
[5:17] Speaker 1: of lions harvested in this country ninety five to ninety nine,
[5:22] Speaker 1: I would say, would be lions that were harvested over dogs.
[5:26] Speaker 1: And it's primarily in the west. There are no lion
[5:30] Speaker 1: seasons east of the Mississippi or even really east of
[5:34] Speaker 1: the Rocky Mountains, right, and so it's all happening out
[5:37] Speaker 1: west and in the northern part of the Mountain lion
[5:40] Speaker 1: range there's snow. And when you are lion hunting in
[5:45] Speaker 1: the snow with dogs, a human goes out and looks
[5:48] Speaker 1: for a track in the snow so you can drive roads,
[5:52] Speaker 1: you could ride to your equine animal, you could do whatever. However,
[5:55] Speaker 1: you're going to get across the country and cover vast
[5:57] Speaker 1: amounts of ground. Half half of the hunt is finding
[6:01] Speaker 1: a track. But when it's in the snow, you can
[6:02] Speaker 1: see the track, you can tell what kind of line
[6:05] Speaker 1: it is. You know if it's a male female. Typically,
[6:09] Speaker 1: but most importantly, scent holds better in the snow, and
[6:15] Speaker 1: is much easier to trail a lion in snow than
[6:18] Speaker 1: it is on dry ground. It was described to me
[6:20] Speaker 1: one time like this, imagine a scent particle being essentially
[6:26] Speaker 1: like a biologically active particle, and if you put that
[6:31] Speaker 1: particle in the refrigerator, it would last longer and not degradate.
[6:37] Speaker 2: Which this brings up a point. I was curious about
[6:41] Speaker 2: that word, which I don't think is a word degradate. Yeah,
[6:45] Speaker 2: oh dang, yeah, So folks English majors forgive him.
[6:50] Speaker 1: Well, degradates a word degrade. It's just pronunciation tomato, tomato.
[6:57] Speaker 1: So the scent particle, if you were to take it
[6:59] Speaker 1: and put it into the refrigerator, that makes sense. I've
[7:02] Speaker 1: never thought about that, but it totally makes sense. And
[7:05] Speaker 1: so lion hunting in the snow is easier. I'm not
[7:08] Speaker 1: saying it's easy, but it's easier, and it takes a
[7:12] Speaker 1: dog that doesn't have to have as good as nose.
[7:15] Speaker 1: You get into the arid Southwest like in Utah, New Mexico, Arizona.
[7:20] Speaker 1: You used to could run hounds in California, ken anymore. Uh,
[7:25] Speaker 1: they're having to start these lines on dry ground right
[7:28] Speaker 1: and in the hound world, and people turn it up
[7:33] Speaker 1: if you're if you're what, turn up the volume on
[7:36] Speaker 1: your device right now so you can hear this. In
[7:39] Speaker 1: the hound world, the dry ground lion dogs are the
[7:44] Speaker 1: Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Lebron James of of of the
[7:50] Speaker 1: Hound World. There, I said it, I said it. Okay.
[7:55] Speaker 1: It takes a lot higher skill set two tree a
[8:00] Speaker 1: line on dry ground than it does to tree a coon.
[8:02] Speaker 2: I can just see the comments that are going, Oh.
[8:04] Speaker 1: It's gonna it's gonna hurt, but it's just it's just no,
[8:08] Speaker 1: there's every every animal and dog used in hunting has
[8:12] Speaker 1: to have a specific set of skill sets that make
[8:14] Speaker 1: it wonderful and unique. But from my estimation, for whatever
[8:20] Speaker 1: that's worth, and the estimation of many really great people
[8:24] Speaker 1: in the hound world, for a dry ground line dog,
[8:27] Speaker 1: he's got to have an almost otherworldly nose, okay. And
[8:31] Speaker 1: for instance, in coon hunting, you don't necessarily want one
[8:34] Speaker 1: with a super cold nose because there's there's coons everywhere.
[8:38] Speaker 1: You don't want him to treat started track that's twelve
[8:41] Speaker 1: hours old, right, You want him to go find a
[8:43] Speaker 1: hot one, right, And that's all in his ability to
[8:46] Speaker 1: smell and his desire. You got to have a line
[8:48] Speaker 1: dog that has an extremely cold nose. These dogs have
[8:51] Speaker 1: got to be superb athletes. I mean, I'm telling you,
[8:56] Speaker 1: McLean Meekham's dogs were running. I mean we were putting
[9:00] Speaker 1: twelve to twenty miles a day on the mules. We
[9:04] Speaker 1: were following the dogs, not step first step, but I
[9:08] Speaker 1: mean those dogs had well over one hundred probably one
[9:12] Speaker 1: hundred and fifty miles.
[9:13] Speaker 2: You're gonna you're gonna have to pump the brakes on
[9:15] Speaker 2: this preamble a little bit. Coming getting into the content
[9:18] Speaker 2: that we're going to talk about. People got lots of questions.
[9:19] Speaker 1: Well I hadn't even started the preamble yet. All that
[9:22] Speaker 1: to say, dry ground line hunting and the men and
[9:26] Speaker 1: women that are dry ground line hunters often are held
[9:30] Speaker 1: in high esteem in the in the very small circles,
[9:35] Speaker 1: and the Meekams are nationally known and respected as incredible
[9:42] Speaker 1: dry ground line hunters. And I'm telling you they made
[9:46] Speaker 1: it look easy.
[9:48] Speaker 2: Really.
[9:48] Speaker 1: Yeah, to go out in five it's amazing. Don't try
[9:52] Speaker 1: to stop me, Josh, to go out in five days
[9:56] Speaker 1: in tree three Well.
[9:59] Speaker 2: That actually kind of of kind of leads me into
[10:01] Speaker 2: into one of our first questions here is you know
[10:05] Speaker 2: you say it's rare to at first, you say it's
[10:09] Speaker 2: rare to to treat two lions in three days?
[10:12] Speaker 1: Right right?
[10:13] Speaker 2: Right? What when you're getting into it? When when you
[10:15] Speaker 2: before you went, what was your expectation did you have
[10:18] Speaker 2: an expectation like could I go five days and with
[10:20] Speaker 2: us not tree line? Or what what did you think
[10:22] Speaker 2: was gonna have?
[10:23] Speaker 1: I mean, I had a lot of confidence in the
[10:25] Speaker 1: Meekhams and they they we were coming at a good time.
[10:28] Speaker 1: It was a good time to come. We had optimal conditions.
[10:31] Speaker 1: We had some snow, it was really cold. But is
[10:35] Speaker 1: it possible to go out there for five days and
[10:37] Speaker 1: not tree a line, even with some of the best. Absolutely?
[10:41] Speaker 3: I know.
[10:43] Speaker 1: I know multiple people. Last night a guy texted me
[10:46] Speaker 1: and said, I've been on two guided lion hunts, like
[10:50] Speaker 1: paid money to go on guided line hunts like week
[10:52] Speaker 1: long hunts and never saw a line. Wow, and like wow,
[10:55] Speaker 1: presumably two five day hunts. I know another guy I
[11:00] Speaker 1: won't say his name, a dear friend of mine, has
[11:02] Speaker 1: been on two guided line hunts with very reputial outfitters
[11:07] Speaker 1: and has never killed a line. I think they probably
[11:09] Speaker 1: treat a female or something.
[11:10] Speaker 2: Wow.
[11:11] Speaker 1: And so yeah, for us to treat three in five
[11:16] Speaker 1: days was you couldn't have asked for anything better.
[11:19] Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, we've got some kind of we've got some
[11:21] Speaker 2: footage of of kind of just of the terrain of
[11:25] Speaker 2: where you were hunting in Utah. Have you hunted in
[11:28] Speaker 2: this region before?
[11:30] Speaker 1: Never have? This is my first time in Utah.
[11:32] Speaker 2: So did you have an expectation of what the riding
[11:34] Speaker 2: and the and would be like before you got there?
[11:37] Speaker 1: You know, yeah, it was. It was probably longer than
[11:41] Speaker 1: I thought it was going to be. Like, we rode
[11:43] Speaker 1: over eighty miles per hour on X that we were tracked.
[11:46] Speaker 2: That's a lot of miles. And you rode the same mule,
[11:49] Speaker 2: didn't you.
[11:49] Speaker 1: I rode the same meal.
[11:50] Speaker 2: That's unbelievable. That's unbelievab.
[11:52] Speaker 1: Yes, one of the mules. So our cameraman, one of
[11:55] Speaker 1: our cameramen was on a mule law and Molten and
[12:01] Speaker 1: on the fifth day and he I mean this mule
[12:04] Speaker 1: is riding right behind me. I mean it's gone eighty miles.
[12:07] Speaker 1: I asked mcclan how old is that mule? And he
[12:10] Speaker 1: said twenty five years old. Wow, carried Lorn Malton eighty
[12:16] Speaker 1: eighty miles and you know, not like eighty twel miles
[12:19] Speaker 1: telling you eighty miles of up and down an elevation
[12:24] Speaker 1: game and skidding down mountains. I mean, rough, unbelievable, But
[12:29] Speaker 1: it actually to me in some ways is I don't
[12:34] Speaker 1: want to say easier. But when you ride long distance
[12:38] Speaker 1: in the eastern deciduous forest, you're constantly fighting brush and
[12:42] Speaker 1: getting scratched up.
[12:43] Speaker 2: I wondered it was what happened to your nose?
[12:46] Speaker 1: I got banged by a cedar tree. But most of
[12:49] Speaker 1: the time we're just like out in the wide open,
[12:51] Speaker 1: okay most of the time.
[12:52] Speaker 2: Well the scenery was I mean spectacular, So well, that's
[12:57] Speaker 2: that's great. We're gonna we're gonna watch another clip here.
[13:00] Speaker 1: Three quarters of a century of selective breeding by the Meekams,
[13:05] Speaker 1: and you'd have to sell your truck to buy one
[13:07] Speaker 1: if they were ever for sale. Line dogs require a
[13:11] Speaker 1: unique skill set of hunt drive, physical stamina which borders
[13:15] Speaker 1: on something supernatural, and an incredible nose, topped with desire
[13:20] Speaker 1: to treat game, not just to run it.
[13:25] Speaker 2: So you kind of got into it. Was there anything
[13:27] Speaker 2: you wanted to add to well, you know, people would
[13:31] Speaker 2: look at these dogs and just think, you know, there
[13:33] Speaker 2: some of them are mixed breed, but they've just they've
[13:37] Speaker 2: they've bred these genetics into them to do what they're
[13:40] Speaker 2: supposed to do. So you talked about cold nose, you
[13:43] Speaker 2: you talked about them being able just to trail and
[13:47] Speaker 2: to have the drive and the athleticism anything else that
[13:50] Speaker 2: would set apart a lion dog, a dry ground lion
[13:54] Speaker 2: dog versus like a coon dog or a deer dog.
[13:57] Speaker 1: Well, the when you look at like some of the
[14:03] Speaker 1: bigger hounds in the East, and there's some big dry
[14:06] Speaker 1: ground line dogs, but typically like McLean's dogs were probably
[14:12] Speaker 1: fifty probably forty five to sixty five pounds, and I
[14:17] Speaker 1: mean some of these bigger coon dog breeds are are
[14:21] Speaker 1: bigger than that. And a bigger dog typically breaks down
[14:24] Speaker 1: a little faster, just like doesn't have like the stamina
[14:26] Speaker 1: of their feet breakdown. And so when you're going that
[14:29] Speaker 1: many miles day after day, you got to have a
[14:32] Speaker 1: dog with really good feet and that won't go lame
[14:36] Speaker 1: on you, you know, way back out there. Sure, and
[14:40] Speaker 1: that comes after just selective breeding, you know, litter after litter,
[14:46] Speaker 1: and breeding the good ones to the good ones, you know,
[14:49] Speaker 1: and eventually you get this this dog that is kind
[14:53] Speaker 1: of dial itself in a way, you know. I mean,
[14:56] Speaker 1: when these these guys hunt so much, they really do.
[15:00] Speaker 1: I mean, they they hunt so much, and they just
[15:05] Speaker 1: really their dogs express the potential that they have. And
[15:11] Speaker 1: but okay, I think the dogs are endlessly fascinating.
[15:14] Speaker 2: Another question, how would you respond to critics of hunting
[15:18] Speaker 2: with hounds that would say it's easy or there's no
[15:21] Speaker 2: hunting taking place.
[15:23] Speaker 1: Right man, I would say, honestly, anybody that would say
[15:27] Speaker 1: that has never maybe they've gone on a hound hunt,
[15:31] Speaker 1: but they've never owned hounds or done it themselves. And
[15:34] Speaker 1: I would I would say that hunting with hounds is
[15:37] Speaker 1: actually the most primitive method of hunting. Like if you
[15:40] Speaker 1: take out a scope with a rifle on it and
[15:42] Speaker 1: go sit in a deer stand, and then you say
[15:45] Speaker 1: that someone is not hunting when they're hunting with hounds,
[15:48] Speaker 1: I mean you kind of live, you know, dichotomy. There's
[15:52] Speaker 1: some this isn't going to work for you. But I'm
[15:57] Speaker 1: a big proponent of hound hunting, and it's a traditional
[16:00] Speaker 1: practice that goes back to the very beginning of the
[16:03] Speaker 1: human story. And so this is a this is a
[16:06] Speaker 1: modified version of that. I mean, it's like, obviously we're
[16:09] Speaker 1: not subsistence hunting, but it's super hard man. Yeah, I
[16:14] Speaker 1: mean you load up a pack of hounds and try
[16:16] Speaker 1: to go out to Utah by yourself and tree line
[16:20] Speaker 1: good luck. Yeah, you know, it's it's it's very difficult.
[16:23] Speaker 1: And then the beauty of it from a conservation perspective
[16:26] Speaker 1: is you get to you get to be selective on
[16:29] Speaker 1: the animals that you harvest, which was pretty much the
[16:31] Speaker 1: theme of our of our of our sure for sure.
[16:34] Speaker 2: Okay, let's we got another clip here too.
[16:37] Speaker 1: The African tracker's ability to follow planes game hyper focus
[16:43] Speaker 1: on obscure details for decades produces unique while following the
[16:47] Speaker 1: dogs step for step. And there's a reason these Western
[16:51] Speaker 1: line hunters typically use mules. They're more surefooted, safer, lasts
[16:57] Speaker 1: longer in rough country than horses.
[16:59] Speaker 2: Tipically, there's a it's a few clips together.
[17:03] Speaker 1: Temperatures are hovering in the single digits, and we're going
[17:07] Speaker 1: into a completely new canyon.
[17:10] Speaker 2: Oh, not supposed to hear the audio of this anyway,
[17:16] Speaker 2: We'll just watch it. The dogs make so that that
[17:22] Speaker 2: that spot there Tie when Tie's mule slips on the
[17:28] Speaker 2: rock that was that could have been pretty hairy right there.
[17:33] Speaker 1: You know, Tie Evans heartbeat would not have skipped a beat.
[17:38] Speaker 2: Really yeah, he didn't.
[17:40] Speaker 1: He wouldn't have even and he knew that everything was
[17:43] Speaker 1: okay because of that mule. I mean that that's that's
[17:48] Speaker 1: when you want to have an animal that's very sure footed,
[17:52] Speaker 1: and that's when where the mules thrive. And I mean
[17:54] Speaker 1: obviously that mule slipped and fell, but it recovered tumbled
[17:59] Speaker 1: down the mountain.
[18:00] Speaker 2: Sure would you say this is probably some of the
[18:03] Speaker 2: roughest riding you've.
[18:04] Speaker 1: Done, you know I have done. There was one section
[18:11] Speaker 1: on day one that was super steep and the camera
[18:15] Speaker 1: just didn't pick it up.
[18:16] Speaker 2: There were a couple of spots though, where you you
[18:19] Speaker 2: could get a little bit of an idea of how
[18:21] Speaker 2: steep it was. I mean it scared me, you know,
[18:22] Speaker 2: having been on a mule a little bit, it scared
[18:25] Speaker 2: me looking at it.
[18:26] Speaker 1: Well, the first the first two hours we rode, the
[18:30] Speaker 1: dogs just went over this mountain and belled off and
[18:33] Speaker 1: it was I mean, it's hard. I don't even know
[18:38] Speaker 1: how to describe how steep it was. I would say
[18:42] Speaker 1: ninety five percent of people riding an ecoin animal would
[18:45] Speaker 1: have walked the mule down right, and we knew we
[18:49] Speaker 1: could have right, But I was there with Ti Evans,
[18:52] Speaker 1: McLain Meekham, and I was like, hey, let's just ride.
[18:55] Speaker 2: That scene where I don't know if it was McClain
[18:58] Speaker 2: or if it was Tie where they're coming down and
[19:01] Speaker 2: you mentioned the bridge and that was steep. Yeah, I
[19:04] Speaker 2: mean that was really steep. And you mentioned the brig
[19:07] Speaker 2: and that you use the bridging on mules, and that's
[19:11] Speaker 2: the strap that goes around the hind quarters of the mule.
[19:14] Speaker 2: Whichever you use a bridging on a horse.
[19:16] Speaker 1: It typically don't And I wasn't able. This is a
[19:19] Speaker 1: prime example people of where it films doesn't give you
[19:22] Speaker 1: the time to tell the whole story. So the reason
[19:25] Speaker 1: that you only see briging on mules is because a
[19:29] Speaker 1: mule's front shoulders are narrow, and so the saddle has
[19:34] Speaker 1: a tendency to slide forward because the mule doesn't have
[19:39] Speaker 1: very strong withers, which withers is an anatomical term for
[19:43] Speaker 1: basically the front shoulders and like the hump on the
[19:47] Speaker 1: neck of a horse, right right, So a horse has big, strong,
[19:51] Speaker 1: broad front shoulders. A horse is more typically has more
[19:56] Speaker 1: muscle than a mule, and they have a lot of
[19:58] Speaker 1: it up front. They have big, big hind quarters sinks
[20:02] Speaker 1: in then big front shoulders. A mule has big, nice
[20:05] Speaker 1: hind quarters and narrower front shoulders. The saddles slides forward.
[20:10] Speaker 1: You need a breech and to keep your saddle from
[20:12] Speaker 1: sliding forward.
[20:13] Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, are these mules? Shoot? Did they?
[20:17] Speaker 1: Yes? They these mules were shod and had had ice.
[20:25] Speaker 1: I was unfamiliar with it because we don't have that here,
[20:28] Speaker 1: but they had like ice cleats. Oh really, yes, they
[20:32] Speaker 1: told me when I was originally going to bring Izzy.
[20:34] Speaker 1: So Izzy is is my nine year old mule that
[20:39] Speaker 1: that you would see on the logo of the Burger
[20:41] Speaker 1: Eas podcast. So that's the mule that I trained and
[20:44] Speaker 1: still have. When I told originally we were gonna go
[20:48] Speaker 1: out there and take our mules, Me and justin House,
[20:51] Speaker 1: my friend justin House from Arkansas, We're going to drive
[20:53] Speaker 1: out there, and uh, there was actually an equine disease
[20:57] Speaker 1: that was going around the rodeo world at that time.
[21:01] Speaker 1: An interstate travel of equine animals was in jeopardy. Like
[21:05] Speaker 1: it's possible we could have got out there and if
[21:07] Speaker 1: it had escalated, we might have had to left our
[21:11] Speaker 1: mules there or something. So we decided to fly and
[21:14] Speaker 1: to ride his mules. But when we were going to
[21:17] Speaker 1: take mine.
[21:18] Speaker 2: Which ended up being a good decision.
[21:19] Speaker 1: I think it was when we got there where he said,
[21:23] Speaker 1: when you and is he get here, we'll put these
[21:25] Speaker 1: basically snowshoes on her. Okay, like they were that serious.
[21:29] Speaker 1: They were like, you need these, wo and man when
[21:32] Speaker 1: in some of that stuff, I was very glad to
[21:35] Speaker 1: have a grippy a grippy shoe on those right mules.
[21:40] Speaker 2: Right. We had a comment on YouTube by Brooke Anderson
[21:46] Speaker 2: fourteen twenty three said, this is the most unique camera
[21:49] Speaker 2: work I've ever seen on a hunting show. Really makes
[21:52] Speaker 2: you feel like you're riding along with them. I'd love
[21:55] Speaker 2: to see more hunts on horseback film like this, And
[21:58] Speaker 2: I just want to give a quick shout out to
[22:00] Speaker 2: the camera guys.
[22:01] Speaker 1: Yeah, Drew Steckline and Lauren Moulton.
[22:04] Speaker 2: Yeah, they not only filmed, but they were you know,
[22:06] Speaker 2: they weren't just riding, but they were also filming, so.
[22:09] Speaker 1: They were there the whole time.
[22:11] Speaker 2: You know what.
[22:12] Speaker 1: A lot of those a lot of that riding stuff
[22:14] Speaker 1: was done with those OSMO cameras. Yeah, he's a little gimbal.
[22:18] Speaker 2: You're letting people see behind the curtain, little.
[22:20] Speaker 1: Little gimbal cameras.
[22:21] Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty slick, pretty slick. Well, shout out to those not.
[22:25] Speaker 1: To I won't say which one, but behind this is
[22:28] Speaker 1: behind the scenes, right behind the scenes, like unplugged.
[22:31] Speaker 2: Yep, right, yeah, this like a backstone.
[22:33] Speaker 1: One of our cameras got lost. Osmo cameras got lost
[22:38] Speaker 1: underneath that lion, the first lion.
[22:40] Speaker 2: Oh really Yeah, so if you recognize that tree, if.
[22:44] Speaker 1: You find it out there in the Utah backcountry, let
[22:49] Speaker 1: us know.
[22:54] Speaker 2: We've got another clip here from the truck.
[22:56] Speaker 1: We went down some steep stuff that might have deterred
[22:59] Speaker 1: us if we didn't have to follow the dogs that
[23:02] Speaker 1: failed off the edge. Dogs often force your hand to
[23:05] Speaker 1: go places you wouldn't choose the strap around the back
[23:11] Speaker 1: of the mules high.
[23:12] Speaker 2: Nope, I guess that's it. So kind of help us
[23:18] Speaker 2: understand you kind of you kind of described the the
[23:22] Speaker 2: qualities of a good dry ground line dog. But when
[23:26] Speaker 2: you're running dogs, what are you trying to do? Are
[23:29] Speaker 2: you trying to maintain a certain distance from them? What's
[23:32] Speaker 2: what's that process? And you use the term of dog race,
[23:35] Speaker 2: what does that mean?
[23:37] Speaker 1: So these guys are free casting hounds, which means they
[23:43] Speaker 1: don't always know where the track is if if you well,
[23:47] Speaker 1: let me back up. Free casting hounds just means you
[23:50] Speaker 1: just turn the dogs out and have that they're just
[23:52] Speaker 1: looking for a us set. They're not on a leash,
[23:54] Speaker 1: they're just out hunting, right, And so we free cast dogs.
[23:59] Speaker 1: And they have have a ton of control over these dogs.
[24:02] Speaker 1: And I mentioned in the film you can you know,
[24:03] Speaker 1: they kind of hunt them like bird dogs. They want
[24:06] Speaker 1: them to stay fairly close. But then because when they
[24:11] Speaker 1: the dogs start running a track that they want to
[24:15] Speaker 1: be able to go over to where the dog is
[24:17] Speaker 1: barking and see if they can physically see a track.
[24:20] Speaker 1: So they don't want a dog to go three miles
[24:23] Speaker 1: in there without them and start a track that they
[24:27] Speaker 1: can't immediately go and check out. Because these dogs will
[24:30] Speaker 1: run bobcats and mountain lions and they don't A dog
[24:36] Speaker 1: is not gonna distinguish between let's say a female with
[24:41] Speaker 1: kittens and a big tom. I mean they'll run either
[24:44] Speaker 1: one just the same. And so if it was a
[24:46] Speaker 1: female with kittens, they would immediately pull the dogs off,
[24:49] Speaker 1: and they do that through just training, I mean vocal commands,
[24:54] Speaker 1: but they can also tone the dog, which is not
[24:56] Speaker 1: shocking it, but just beeping it and getting attention of
[25:00] Speaker 1: the dog, and they can they can call them back
[25:02] Speaker 1: from long distance. I want to say something about that
[25:06] Speaker 1: little clip talked about how when you're following hounds, you
[25:10] Speaker 1: go places that you would have never gone otherwise. And
[25:14] Speaker 1: that is a cool part of hound hunting because if
[25:19] Speaker 1: you were just going on a pleasure ride through all
[25:22] Speaker 1: those canyons that we went through, I mean, you would
[25:25] Speaker 1: pretty much take the easiest route, or maybe a route
[25:28] Speaker 1: that went by some esthetic point or something. Man, when
[25:32] Speaker 1: you're following the dogs, you're you just have to go
[25:37] Speaker 1: where they go, right, and so you find yourself in
[25:42] Speaker 1: all kind of just places that just are off literally
[25:46] Speaker 1: off the beaten path. And that's what I've always liked
[25:50] Speaker 1: about hound hunting is you know, you just get a
[25:53] Speaker 1: tour of the world. And that kind of goes as
[25:55] Speaker 1: well to what I was so impressed with. We would
[26:00] Speaker 1: be so far from the truck, Josh, yeah, and McClain
[26:04] Speaker 1: would be like, man, when we drop off in this
[26:07] Speaker 1: little canyon, we're gonna pull up and there'll be a
[26:10] Speaker 1: big bluff and behind that bluff is a set of
[26:13] Speaker 1: pine trees and that's where those cats like to mark.
[26:16] Speaker 1: The male cats like to scratch. And we're gonna go there,
[26:20] Speaker 1: and I mean we've been We're like seven miles from
[26:23] Speaker 1: the truck. And he would just have this copographic memory
[26:30] Speaker 1: of just every detail of the land that I mean,
[26:37] Speaker 1: you just wouldn't. You just wouldn't be able to have
[26:40] Speaker 1: that detailed of a map in your head without a lifetime.
[26:45] Speaker 1: And McLain's in his fifties. And but also being on
[26:50] Speaker 1: the back of a mule or horse like you just
[26:52] Speaker 1: you can just cover so much ground. But they also
[26:54] Speaker 1: elk hunting, mule deer hunt in these regions, and that's
[26:59] Speaker 1: I think that's an interesting place. We ought to go,
[27:01] Speaker 1: probably sooner rather than later. Is the the the what
[27:07] Speaker 1: the film dealt with so much, which which was lion conservation.
[27:10] Speaker 2: We've got that coming and we've got a lot of
[27:12] Speaker 2: comments about that. So but we're almost there.
[27:15] Speaker 1: Well, they they mule deer hunt, elk hunt this, so
[27:19] Speaker 1: I mean they just know it every possible way in
[27:21] Speaker 1: and out.
[27:24] Speaker 2: Yeah, at B spoke to said this was much harder
[27:27] Speaker 2: before GPS dogs. He's correct, Okay, we're kind of we're
[27:32] Speaker 2: getting to the lion here.
[27:37] Speaker 1: Well, we got a lion, man. They started it way
[27:44] Speaker 1: the heck over in that other canyon, and we can
[27:47] Speaker 1: see it right up in the tree, just glowing up there.
[28:00] Speaker 3: Yeah, Tom got his head and then about four inches
[28:10] Speaker 3: under the base of his tail will be a black
[28:11] Speaker 3: dot if it's a tom.
[28:13] Speaker 2: So we'll get up here and get a look at him.
[28:16] Speaker 2: And let's look at the scream. So you got that
[28:25] Speaker 2: first lion? How many days in was that?
[28:28] Speaker 1: That was the second day.
[28:29] Speaker 2: Okay, what's it like to be standing that close to
[28:37] Speaker 2: a full grown mountain lion?
[28:40] Speaker 1: Well, I noted it of just just how rare it
[28:44] Speaker 1: really is, Like I mean, if you're if you're a
[28:47] Speaker 1: lion hunter, it's not because you see him, you have
[28:50] Speaker 1: the dogs, but really in a natural situation without dogs,
[28:54] Speaker 1: just in a you would be very rare to be
[28:58] Speaker 1: that close to the line without it. Just I mean,
[29:00] Speaker 1: the lions are notorious for being unseen. And then in
[29:05] Speaker 1: a lot of the GPS college studies they've done, they
[29:09] Speaker 1: they see how close these lions let humans get to them,
[29:13] Speaker 1: and the lions never, you know, reveal their presence. Like, so,
[29:19] Speaker 1: a lot of people out west that live in Lyon
[29:21] Speaker 1: country that are doing a lot of bad country stuff
[29:24] Speaker 1: have probably been within twenty to fifty yards of many
[29:28] Speaker 1: lions that they never knew about, which is interesting. But no,
[29:33] Speaker 1: this line. When I first I knew we weren't gonna
[29:39] Speaker 1: shoot a small line, okay, And we really hadn't talked
[29:43] Speaker 1: about exactly what was acceptable.
[29:48] Speaker 2: You know.
[29:48] Speaker 1: I mean I didn't know what kind of lion. We
[29:50] Speaker 1: just knew we needed a mail for sure, in an adult,
[29:55] Speaker 1: you know, a full grown one. And man, when I
[29:58] Speaker 1: walked up to the tree, I was like, dang, that's
[30:01] Speaker 1: a pretty good mountain line. I mean, it had a
[30:03] Speaker 1: pretty big head. And but I could I could just
[30:10] Speaker 1: immediately tell well, I mean they told me, They're like, yeah,
[30:12] Speaker 1: that's like a two year old line, you know, And.
[30:16] Speaker 2: Did you think it was older than that?
[30:18] Speaker 1: I would have thought it was older than that.
[30:20] Speaker 2: But I have no right basis because you've you've lined
[30:23] Speaker 2: hunted before you took a lion.
[30:25] Speaker 1: Yeah, this is this line weigh one hundred and twelve pounds.
[30:29] Speaker 1: Where in uh in the Panhandle of Idaho. Leon Brown
[30:34] Speaker 1: guy named Leon Brown plotman, And I mean that's technically
[30:40] Speaker 1: an adult. I mean, like it wasn't like still with
[30:42] Speaker 1: its mother. But this was probably a two year old
[30:45] Speaker 1: line hundred and twelve pounds, which is you know, you're
[30:52] Speaker 1: you're you're hoping to take out the big ones and
[30:54] Speaker 1: in the biggest lines in North America and these would
[30:59] Speaker 1: be like phantom, but would you know push two hundred pounds.
[31:02] Speaker 1: I mean there have been two hundred pound lines taken,
[31:05] Speaker 1: but a big tom in Utah, I would say, would
[31:10] Speaker 1: be in one hundred and fifty pound range plus or minds,
[31:14] Speaker 1: I mean like that would have been.
[31:16] Speaker 2: And that's what they're that's what they're looking for.
[31:18] Speaker 1: That's what they're looking for. But then again, these guys,
[31:22] Speaker 1: like I said, hunters never killed one. I mean, they're just.
[31:26] Speaker 2: Did he say why? Did he say why? I mean,
[31:29] Speaker 2: they're just like he's seen a mature cat.
[31:32] Speaker 1: I mean, well, number one, there they are outfitters, right like,
[31:37] Speaker 1: so they do take people that they're trying to get
[31:40] Speaker 1: a line. So presumably a lot of the big ones
[31:43] Speaker 1: they've they've they've treated, they had a client with them,
[31:46] Speaker 1: you know, so they would have shot the line. But
[31:49] Speaker 1: I get it, like it's just not that's just not
[31:52] Speaker 1: what they're in it for, right, Like just to to
[31:55] Speaker 1: shoot a line just doesn't mean that much to him.
[31:58] Speaker 1: They'd rather let it go and treat it again, or
[32:02] Speaker 1: or someone someone else take it right. And so I thought,
[32:09] Speaker 1: I thought that was interesting and that made me feel
[32:11] Speaker 1: good when I passed that line, because it was hard.
[32:14] Speaker 1: I would have been so happy with that line. I
[32:18] Speaker 1: think it was probably bigger, you know. McLean said it
[32:20] Speaker 1: was between one hundred and ten and one hundred and
[32:22] Speaker 1: twenty pounds, and I feel like it looked quite a
[32:26] Speaker 1: bit bigger than Oh really in this one, Okay, doude.
[32:29] Speaker 1: This this hunt is on the bear Grease YouTube channel. Okay,
[32:34] Speaker 1: my lion hunt from like twenty sixteen or something, probably
[32:37] Speaker 1: ten years ago. I went up to the panhand on Idaho.
[32:40] Speaker 1: I killed that one with a traditional bow with Leon Brown.
[32:44] Speaker 2: So we have another another comment from YouTube. I believe
[32:52] Speaker 2: s three V three n D three two to lots
[32:55] Speaker 2: of threes. Okay, and that user name How does passing
[32:58] Speaker 2: on a kill affect the dogs? How do you reward
[33:01] Speaker 2: them and also disengage them from a successful hunt when
[33:04] Speaker 2: you don't understand the harvest of an animal, When you
[33:07] Speaker 2: don't harvest animal right.
[33:09] Speaker 1: You know what, I think it's that's a good question
[33:12] Speaker 1: because it would seem like those dogs.
[33:14] Speaker 2: I like how he said a successful hunt too. I
[33:17] Speaker 2: mean that the dogs did their job.
[33:19] Speaker 1: Right, right. Well, I think the reward for those dogs
[33:22] Speaker 1: is just to look at it, yeah, and see it
[33:25] Speaker 1: up in the tree.
[33:25] Speaker 2: Were you able to get them pulled off and get
[33:28] Speaker 2: them disengaged from that line to move on?
[33:31] Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they just call them, I mean the lead.
[33:34] Speaker 1: They would lead some of the younger dogs away, some
[33:36] Speaker 1: of the older dogs. They just be like, let's go
[33:39] Speaker 1: on to the next one. Okay, And now I hope
[33:45] Speaker 1: that we're as soon getting to line.
[33:47] Speaker 3: Man.
[33:47] Speaker 2: We've got one more clip. We've got one more clip
[33:49] Speaker 2: with a short question, and then we're getting.
[33:51] Speaker 1: In the line, man, because I have some insider information.
[33:54] Speaker 2: I love insider information.
[33:56] Speaker 1: Okay, next clip.
[34:02] Speaker 4: We have.
[34:04] Speaker 1: We've ridden six or seven miles from the truck, and man,
[34:09] Speaker 1: they've got that cat treed. You can see him through
[34:12] Speaker 1: bonos down there. I thought he might be baiting one
[34:17] Speaker 1: of these rocks. We got one of the guys.
[34:19] Speaker 2: Going to him.
[34:21] Speaker 1: We're gonna try to figure out how to get down there.
[34:23] Speaker 1: It looks like Tom just from the track but just
[34:28] Speaker 1: unbelievable country. When you come to Utah, this is where
[34:32] Speaker 1: you'd hope to tree one. I already don't like it.
[34:48] Speaker 1: Pretty sketchy getting down here, But we're gonna try to
[34:51] Speaker 1: look this line over. We don't We think it's probably
[34:54] Speaker 1: the same caliber line as yesterday, but we really don't know.
[34:59] Speaker 1: One we're gonna try to take or not.
[35:02] Speaker 2: So you you mentioned how steep it is and and
[35:06] Speaker 2: that you don't like it. Where'd that come from? Well?
[35:10] Speaker 1: You know, justin House was there? Hunter Hunter Meekon was there? Uh,
[35:15] Speaker 1: Dustin from Arizona was there. Uh, there were there were
[35:19] Speaker 1: multiple people there that went down with us, And it
[35:22] Speaker 1: was not that big of a deal. Like there were
[35:25] Speaker 1: parts where we had to slide right and there were
[35:28] Speaker 1: there was always hand holds. But I was I just
[35:33] Speaker 1: I was trying to just be vulnerable and honest it
[35:36] Speaker 1: it just kind of fluttered my heart, like one of
[35:40] Speaker 1: those flutters that you can't control. Yeah, and uh, and
[35:44] Speaker 1: I was just like, what is going on? Like this
[35:46] Speaker 1: is not even that bad? It was bad, like like
[35:49] Speaker 1: ty Ty Evans had cowboy boots on that day and
[35:54] Speaker 1: he chose not to go down because he had like
[35:56] Speaker 1: slick cowboy boots and and the consequences of Allen were
[36:01] Speaker 1: were high. I mean like it was. It was just
[36:05] Speaker 1: almost straight down in several spots in snow and uh no,
[36:09] Speaker 1: it get I had, I had, I had my buddy
[36:11] Speaker 1: justin carry my gun. I can tell I was kind
[36:14] Speaker 1: of wigged out.
[36:14] Speaker 2: I was like, sorry, you had a pretty harrowing situation
[36:17] Speaker 2: with your mountain mountain gun.
[36:19] Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's what I that's what I well, I
[36:24] Speaker 1: know is part of it is. Uh yeah, we were
[36:27] Speaker 1: Me and Dirt Myth were hanging on the side of
[36:30] Speaker 1: the cliff for two hours retrieving that goat.
[36:33] Speaker 2: Okay, the moment you've been waiting for, Okay, we're going
[36:36] Speaker 2: to talk about conservation.
[36:38] Speaker 1: These these cats are I mean, they're carnivores living off
[36:43] Speaker 1: meat and they they they follow these elk herds. And
[36:48] Speaker 1: what's kind of interesting being here in Utah is that
[36:51] Speaker 1: they really liberal liberalize the lion hunting. And I mean
[36:56] Speaker 1: they you can trap them, snare them you around sea
[37:00] Speaker 1: and don't need a tags, need a license. And you'd
[37:04] Speaker 1: think that the line hunters would be happy about that,
[37:06] Speaker 1: but they're they're not. You know, they feel like they
[37:09] Speaker 1: should be managed a little more conservatively, but the Game
[37:15] Speaker 1: of Fish has done it because they the mule deer
[37:17] Speaker 1: populations are down. They're trying to save some mule deer.
[37:20] Speaker 1: So you know, there's probably like two sides of it.
[37:22] Speaker 1: But when you're with line hunters, they're the ones who are,
[37:27] Speaker 1: you know, wanting to be more conservative.
[37:31] Speaker 5: But taking the beating. And you know, on we everything
[37:36] Speaker 5: needs to be regulated, you know, every specie, but just open,
[37:40] Speaker 5: wide open for one specie is not going to change
[37:43] Speaker 5: our meal deer. Yeah, there's so many other factors. There's highways,
[37:47] Speaker 5: there's stroud out, there's habitat off there's so many other things.
[37:51] Speaker 5: And I think as humans we played more in the
[37:53] Speaker 5: part in hurting the mule deer. Yeah, population than those lines.
[37:56] Speaker 5: Are you taking area like this or there's like at
[38:00] Speaker 5: the elk so they keep the rodcats, the skunks, Yeah,
[38:07] Speaker 5: all kinds of things. But it's amazing how many people
[38:11] Speaker 5: they take out in the hills and the first thing
[38:13] Speaker 5: they see some bones, it's automatically a line killed. So everything,
[38:16] Speaker 5: you know.
[38:16] Speaker 1: So the theme of the film really was the lion conservation,
[38:22] Speaker 1: and in the last year Utah has opened up mountain
[38:28] Speaker 1: lion hunting to to the widest gate possible. It's a
[38:33] Speaker 1: year round season. There's no quotas. You don't have to
[38:38] Speaker 1: have a tag, you don't have to buy a tag
[38:41] Speaker 1: to hunt one. Even as a non resident, all I
[38:44] Speaker 1: had to do was buy a non resident hunting license
[38:47] Speaker 1: and it was legal for me to harvest a mountain line. Now,
[38:49] Speaker 1: after you killed it, you did have you do have
[38:51] Speaker 1: to check it and they pull a tooth and they
[38:54] Speaker 1: they they they gather biological data. But basically this is
[39:00] Speaker 1: this is my understanding of it, which is is is
[39:04] Speaker 1: not the full picture. But there was a time when
[39:08] Speaker 1: there were probably five hundred thousand mule deer in Utah, Okay,
[39:13] Speaker 1: like in the glory days, which that would have been
[39:16] Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, fifty sixty seventies. At some
[39:20] Speaker 1: point in time, there were five hundred thousand mule deer
[39:22] Speaker 1: in Utah. With whatever is happening ecologically management wise today,
[39:29] Speaker 1: as to understand that they have roughly around three hundred
[39:32] Speaker 1: thousand mil deer okay, wow, and it's been that way
[39:36] Speaker 1: for a long time. Well, Utah is a trophy elk
[39:40] Speaker 1: and mule deer state big time. They also have about
[39:46] Speaker 1: three thousand mountain lines in two thousand and seven, twenty
[39:49] Speaker 1: years ago, and it's the guy I talked to believed
[39:54] Speaker 1: it was probably similar to that today. Three thousand mountain lines.
[39:57] Speaker 1: So that's one mountain line for every one hundred a deer. Okay,
[40:02] Speaker 1: and lines undoubtedly are eating deer. And when I talked
[40:08] Speaker 1: to uh, I talked to Chuck. Oh boy, let me.
[40:13] Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna say his name. He's a great guy.
[40:15] Speaker 1: He's helped he's worked a state agencies, knows a lot
[40:19] Speaker 1: about lines. Basically, the lines typically are after the mule
[40:23] Speaker 1: deer more than the elk. And and they don't just
[40:29] Speaker 1: prey upon the mule deer in in uniformity, they trend
[40:37] Speaker 1: heavier towards males. Oh really yeah, because males are solitary,
[40:43] Speaker 1: more solitary, they're traveling more, they're just more vulnerable. So
[40:49] Speaker 1: they're definitely eating does and fawns, but they there would
[40:53] Speaker 1: be a higher percentage of the males that they eat.
[40:56] Speaker 1: And so that actually there's a biological term for it,
[40:59] Speaker 1: but that it sounds bad for a sportsman to think
[41:02] Speaker 1: of of a lion killing a big trophy mule deer,
[41:06] Speaker 1: but from a population level, it's actually less consequential than
[41:11] Speaker 1: if that lion killed a doe, Because if the lion
[41:14] Speaker 1: kills a doe, you're not only killing that doe, but
[41:17] Speaker 1: you're killing her reproduction potential for the rest of her life.
[41:23] Speaker 1: And so basically, when they introduced elk, the first line
[41:29] Speaker 1: studies in Utah were back in the nineteen sixties and
[41:32] Speaker 1: all the lions like exclusively ate mule deer. And it
[41:36] Speaker 1: was because there were hardly any elk there. They introduced
[41:39] Speaker 1: elk and they started taking primarily juvenile juvenile elk. Okay.
[41:47] Speaker 1: But this is the most interesting thing that he said,
[41:50] Speaker 1: is that what you really if you're thinking about mule
[41:53] Speaker 1: deer populations, what you really have to be focused on
[41:56] Speaker 1: is the amount of mule deer fawns getting killed. Okay.
[42:01] Speaker 1: And he said, what kills a bunch of mule deer
[42:03] Speaker 1: fawns is coyotes?
[42:06] Speaker 2: Huh?
[42:06] Speaker 1: And so he said, he said it was it's a
[42:10] Speaker 1: It's very complicated, but basically it's the he believed, Chuck. Uh,
[42:16] Speaker 1: I gotta find Chuck's name.
[42:17] Speaker 2: Hold on here, it's Chuck Bodenkirk Boden, Chuck, Mike Boden, Chuck, Mike.
[42:23] Speaker 1: I was calling Chuck.
[42:24] Speaker 2: Yeah, Mike boden Chuck.
[42:26] Speaker 1: Mike Bodenchuck, He's a sorry, he's he's a consultant. Has
[42:30] Speaker 1: worked with state game agencies with UH Carnivore Management for
[42:36] Speaker 1: his entire career. Like super knowledgeable guy. And I'm not
[42:39] Speaker 1: quoting directly. I just had a conversation with with with
[42:43] Speaker 1: Mike today, but basically it feels like there's a lot
[42:48] Speaker 1: of pressure coming from the sportsman of Utah to hammer
[42:53] Speaker 1: down on the Lions and UH and basically Mike Bodenchuck
[42:59] Speaker 1: and I'm not going to quote him, you can ask
[43:01] Speaker 1: him yourself, but he doesn't think that this. He thinks
[43:04] Speaker 1: that this is unsustainable what Utah is doing. Really he
[43:08] Speaker 1: he I actually thought he was calling me to tell
[43:10] Speaker 1: me I got it wrong, because he somehow he got
[43:13] Speaker 1: hooked up with him and he watched the film It's
[43:15] Speaker 1: This Expert, and I actually thought he was going to say, Clay,
[43:19] Speaker 1: you painted this in the wrong light. This is actually
[43:23] Speaker 1: good and he was like, he was like, well, he said,
[43:27] Speaker 1: I don't think it's sustainable, and what he The only
[43:32] Speaker 1: positive thing that he did say about this new rule
[43:36] Speaker 1: that the new regulations is that it does just open
[43:41] Speaker 1: up a lot of sportsman opportunity and the state agencies
[43:46] Speaker 1: aren't going to be killing problem lions. A sportsman could
[43:49] Speaker 1: actually go kill a problem line. So they do have
[43:52] Speaker 1: livestock depredation in Utah. Sheep, cattle, stuff gets killed less
[43:57] Speaker 1: than it has been in a long time. But in
[44:00] Speaker 1: the past, if you had a sheep get killed by
[44:03] Speaker 1: a lion, you would call the state agency and they
[44:05] Speaker 1: would send out a government hunter to come kill that line. Today,
[44:10] Speaker 1: with three hundred and sixty five day a year season,
[44:14] Speaker 1: you could call your buddy that's got line dogs any
[44:17] Speaker 1: day of the year and go trail a lion and
[44:20] Speaker 1: kill it. And you know, he said, you know that's
[44:22] Speaker 1: positive for sportsmen, right.
[44:25] Speaker 2: So the total reported harvest of mountain lions in Utah
[44:28] Speaker 2: from November twenty twenty three to twenty fourth five hundred
[44:31] Speaker 2: and thirty.
[44:32] Speaker 1: Five hundred and thirty lines. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's
[44:39] Speaker 1: it doesn't I mean, in some really simplistic way, you
[44:42] Speaker 1: would just go, well, a lion on the the that
[44:47] Speaker 1: line that I passed on the second day, he's killing
[44:51] Speaker 1: probably a deer a week, so that's fifty two deer
[44:55] Speaker 1: a year, and you're like, remove that lion. You have
[44:59] Speaker 1: plus fifty two deer. Well, I think what McLain and
[45:05] Speaker 1: what others are saying is that mil deer populations, even
[45:10] Speaker 1: thriving mile deer populations, they have natural systems built for
[45:16] Speaker 1: some level of mortality, and there's a whole lot more
[45:21] Speaker 1: mortality coming from human induced stuff and stuff beyond our control,
[45:27] Speaker 1: droughts that are producing degraded habitat and just increase people
[45:35] Speaker 1: in the state hitting deer on roads, hunters taking deer.
[45:40] Speaker 1: There's just a lot of little points, and basically the
[45:43] Speaker 1: lions are one data point that are taking taking deer
[45:48] Speaker 1: off the landscape. And to just smash in that button
[45:53] Speaker 1: is to the people that I've talked to that are
[45:57] Speaker 1: in the know to think that that's not really helped one.
[46:00] Speaker 2: We've got a comment here from Joe Prutz sixty sixty three.
[46:04] Speaker 2: I'm sure that the game Commission knows that lions aren't
[46:06] Speaker 2: the only factor, but they're most likely the easiest factor
[46:09] Speaker 2: to control.
[46:10] Speaker 1: That's probably a fair statement. Yeah, and it and it's uh.
[46:15] Speaker 1: And the other thing is that you know how many
[46:19] Speaker 1: very serious lion hunters are there in the state of Utah.
[46:22] Speaker 1: I don't know, a couple hundred, maybe right thousand, how
[46:26] Speaker 1: many serious mule deer and elk hunters are there in
[46:29] Speaker 1: the state of Utah A lot, hundreds of thousands, And
[46:32] Speaker 1: so it's one of these things where it may not
[46:37] Speaker 1: be best practice, but it's it's it just seems like
[46:42] Speaker 1: the easy thing. And honestly it's a philosophical question too.
[46:47] Speaker 1: If there were no lions in Utah, there would be
[46:50] Speaker 1: more mule deer, right, I mean period, Yeah. But so
[46:54] Speaker 1: it's like it raises the question, do we want a
[46:58] Speaker 1: Utah with no mountain lions? And I think the answer
[47:02] Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six to the modern sportsman is no.
[47:07] Speaker 1: We want wild landscapes with intact, trophic structure inside of
[47:14] Speaker 1: I mean, we want some predators on the landscape. Our
[47:18] Speaker 1: ability to manage those predators is essential. Take that away
[47:22] Speaker 1: from us and we're in bad trouble and we're gonna
[47:26] Speaker 1: fight to the to the bare dirt to get it back.
[47:30] Speaker 1: But and there's places where they've done that. In California,
[47:33] Speaker 1: they've completely just like taken the legs out of predator
[47:37] Speaker 1: management and it's it's wild over there, what's going on?
[47:42] Speaker 2: And just to be clear, the only way to actively
[47:45] Speaker 2: hunt mountain lion would be with dogs.
[47:47] Speaker 1: Well, no, so this is in open landscapes like in Utah,
[47:57] Speaker 1: and now there will be a lot of just happenstance hunting.
[48:04] Speaker 1: Like if you're elk hunting with a rifle and you
[48:07] Speaker 1: see a line over there three hundred yards talking across
[48:09] Speaker 1: the ridge, you can shoot it legally. And so there
[48:13] Speaker 1: is going to be quite a bit of harvest that's
[48:17] Speaker 1: going to come from just kind of by accident. There's
[48:23] Speaker 1: a term I'm looking for, what's the term. Secondly, there's
[48:29] Speaker 1: a lot of trapping going on in Utah at A
[48:32] Speaker 1: lot of guys are trapping mountain lions, and so in
[48:37] Speaker 1: the past, pretty much the only way you would have
[48:41] Speaker 1: done it would have been with dogs. But now everybody
[48:43] Speaker 1: that's got to tag and a weapon in their hand
[48:45] Speaker 1: could shoot a line. And I mean I would if
[48:48] Speaker 1: I was out there elk hunting and saw a big
[48:51] Speaker 1: mountain lion walking across the ridge.
[48:54] Speaker 2: Yep.
[48:55] Speaker 1: Oh, I mean that's that's pretty cool.
[48:57] Speaker 2: Yeah, But.
[49:00] Speaker 1: So what it Mike bowdenchuck he watched the film and
[49:06] Speaker 1: he said, Clay, your experience there in Utah was exactly
[49:11] Speaker 1: what I would have predicted. He said, the top end
[49:14] Speaker 1: of male mountain lions is gone out of.
[49:19] Speaker 2: Utah because of the open season.
[49:23] Speaker 1: Yeah, or will be gone because year round no quota.
[49:29] Speaker 1: So in the past they would have had the state
[49:33] Speaker 1: separated into quota quota zones for lions. So like maybe
[49:37] Speaker 1: where the and I don't know this, but perhaps like
[49:39] Speaker 1: where the meecums were hunting, there would have been a
[49:41] Speaker 1: thirty lion quota with a with a female quota too,
[49:46] Speaker 1: so like maybe you could kill thirty lines, but if
[49:48] Speaker 1: you killed fifteen females that shut off, but you could
[49:52] Speaker 1: kill thirty males. So they regulated it pretty tightly. And
[49:57] Speaker 1: so this this is essentially going to take that top
[50:01] Speaker 1: end because guys are gonna go there. Uh uh run
[50:06] Speaker 1: dogs and the big ones they're going to get because
[50:11] Speaker 1: you can hunt them through in sixty five days a year.
[50:12] Speaker 1: Oh really, Oh yeah, you hunt them, hunt them every day.
[50:15] Speaker 2: Wow. Wow, that's a big deal.
[50:17] Speaker 1: Yeah. And so he said us seeing juveniles like this
[50:22] Speaker 1: or or sub adults, he said, was pretty typical. And
[50:26] Speaker 1: and honestly, the McLain and them and hunter you know,
[50:31] Speaker 1: just kind of said Clay, Probably a lot of line
[50:34] Speaker 1: hunters in Utah would have shot those two cats, those
[50:37] Speaker 1: two males like they're just looking for you know, a
[50:40] Speaker 1: grown male.
[50:42] Speaker 2: So a couple of other comments, Austin Sikich says, as
[50:50] Speaker 2: a Utah hunter, I appreciate you guys bringing awareness to
[50:53] Speaker 2: our backwards approach to predator management. Killing lions to help
[50:56] Speaker 2: mule dealers, like putting water in a grease fire. We
[50:58] Speaker 2: need to prioritize water and habitat, not killing lions. I
[51:03] Speaker 2: thought that was a good comment. Yeah, we had another
[51:07] Speaker 2: comment that talks about wild horses even Yeah, he says,
[51:11] Speaker 2: the mule deer in Utah have a lot of competition
[51:14] Speaker 2: for feet and water as well elk, pronghorn, and tons
[51:17] Speaker 2: of wild horses. I've watched a group of wild horses
[51:20] Speaker 2: run a herd of deer off of a water hole
[51:22] Speaker 2: and a couple a couple of years ago, those horses
[51:25] Speaker 2: just hung out guarding that water like they owned it.
[51:27] Speaker 2: D n R will remove every line from the state,
[51:30] Speaker 2: but leave the horses alone.
[51:31] Speaker 1: Seems really off to me, guys bringing the heat.
[51:35] Speaker 2: So anyway, it's definitely it's definitely a controversial topic. Yeah,
[51:44] Speaker 2: but I think that the film kind of shed some
[51:48] Speaker 2: light on some good practices.
[51:50] Speaker 1: So I've got a quote Mike. Mike told me this
[51:54] Speaker 1: quote and This wasn't from him. He was quoting somebody else,
[51:57] Speaker 1: one of a biologist that he wants. He said, in
[52:03] Speaker 1: the absence of wolves, he said, the way to save
[52:08] Speaker 1: elk is to reduce the amount of lead in the air. Basically,
[52:17] Speaker 1: this biologist was saying, hey, well, in the absence of wolves,
[52:22] Speaker 1: he said, the way that you manage basically deer in
[52:25] Speaker 1: elk populations is by how many get killed by human hunters.
[52:30] Speaker 2: Well, we had another comment. Andrew Ferris two two five said,
[52:34] Speaker 2: limit the mule deer tags easiest way to control.
[52:36] Speaker 1: And they have done that to the point that you
[52:41] Speaker 1: can hardly hunt mule deer in the storm. Okay, I
[52:43] Speaker 1: mean yeah, Like anybody that knows the draw system or
[52:49] Speaker 1: has played in the draw system knows that you talked
[52:53] Speaker 1: some one of the hardest states to draw. It's also
[52:55] Speaker 1: some of the best mule deer hunting in the country,
[52:56] Speaker 1: So everybody wants to go there. But even residents don't
[53:00] Speaker 1: get tags every year in good zones, typically the residents
[53:07] Speaker 1: get priority, like in some of the premium Western states.
[53:12] Speaker 1: Let's take for instance, Montana. If you're a Montana resident,
[53:16] Speaker 1: every year you get a general Montana elk license, which
[53:22] Speaker 1: means that every year you can hunt elk. You may
[53:25] Speaker 1: not be able to go to the premium zone, right,
[53:27] Speaker 1: but there's a lot of general elk zones. Okay, And
[53:34] Speaker 1: I mean in Arkansas. Can you imagine if we couldn't
[53:38] Speaker 1: hunt deer in Turkey every year, Like if like once
[53:41] Speaker 1: every five years we got to deer hunt. I mean,
[53:43] Speaker 1: that sounds like they'd been constitutional. Yeah, and so in Utah,
[53:50] Speaker 1: and it's other places too, New Mexico and Arizona and
[53:53] Speaker 1: other other states. But there are plenty of places out
[53:57] Speaker 1: west where even the residents have to draw a tag
[54:00] Speaker 1: to be able to hunt, and may not even get
[54:02] Speaker 1: a tag to hunt.
[54:03] Speaker 2: South Dakota's like that.
[54:04] Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's like, well not hunting this year, didn't
[54:07] Speaker 1: get a tag. I mean to those of those of
[54:10] Speaker 1: us in the East hunting deer, in turkeys and bear, that.
[54:14] Speaker 2: Just sounds that is a god given right.
[54:17] Speaker 1: It just sounds unbelievable, but it's the reality out there,
[54:21] Speaker 1: and so they are regulating the tags.
[54:27] Speaker 2: Okay, let's watch another clip. So that was a tom also, Yeah,
[54:55] Speaker 2: it was not quite as big as the other one
[54:58] Speaker 2: or was it similar size?
[54:59] Speaker 1: It was similar size, It didn't look as big it
[55:03] Speaker 1: didn't look quite as big, but it was. It was
[55:05] Speaker 1: a male inside of that same range. So when you're
[55:09] Speaker 1: dealing with servands like elker deer, you you have these
[55:14] Speaker 1: rut windows that produce very specific fawning times, and so
[55:19] Speaker 1: all the juveniles of a given year a cohort are
[55:22] Speaker 1: basically the same age, okay, right, With lions, it's not
[55:26] Speaker 1: like that, Like you know, it's not like they breed
[55:29] Speaker 1: in this window and they have kittens in the spring.
[55:33] Speaker 1: It's not like a bear.
[55:34] Speaker 2: So there's a lot of speculation when you see that.
[55:36] Speaker 1: Yeah, so you might be looking at you might treat
[55:39] Speaker 1: two lions that were born four months apart or five
[55:43] Speaker 1: months apart, when typically in other species that have these
[55:48] Speaker 1: really regulated breeding windows, you would be looking at animals
[55:51] Speaker 1: that would be a cohort of a year, right, like bears,
[55:55] Speaker 1: Like you'd be like, that's a two year old bear,
[55:58] Speaker 1: three year old bear, four year old bear. Does that
[56:01] Speaker 1: make sense?
[56:01] Speaker 2: Absolutely?
[56:02] Speaker 5: Yeah?
[56:02] Speaker 1: Yeah, because the breeding with the cats, as I understand
[56:05] Speaker 1: that they can basically breed any time of the year, okay,
[56:08] Speaker 1: just when that female comes in. I actually learned that
[56:12] Speaker 1: an adult female lion is basically constantly pregnant or with
[56:20] Speaker 1: kittens her entire life. Once she reaches sexual maturity. Wow,
[56:25] Speaker 1: she's either pregnant or nursing or rearing kittens.
[56:30] Speaker 2: Now do you know will they typically have a litter
[56:31] Speaker 2: of kittens? I mean, will they have multiples?
[56:34] Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, I I'm not a line expert. You know
[56:37] Speaker 1: who was Teddy Roosevelt? Be nice to hear of him?
[56:41] Speaker 2: Up? He was.
[56:42] Speaker 1: He was the premiere lion mountain Lion guy in America
[56:48] Speaker 1: in the early nineteen hundred.
[56:49] Speaker 2: He'll see if Steven Alla has his phone number.
[56:51] Speaker 1: Yeah no, but I'm they have like two kittens, okay,
[56:56] Speaker 1: and the obviously could have three or four, Sure could
[56:59] Speaker 1: have one, but typically too kind of like bears.
[57:03] Speaker 6: Okay, let's look at this last clip here, Oh yeah.
[57:20] Speaker 1: Right here that.
[57:24] Speaker 4: All these dogs went the wrong word. This dog stayed
[57:28] Speaker 4: well over here for several hours. This little female he
[57:35] Speaker 4: was the reason we got this cat.
[57:37] Speaker 2: This guy right here, So you you that was obviously
[57:43] Speaker 2: a female. Is there a term for a female cat?
[57:46] Speaker 3: Yeah?
[57:46] Speaker 1: And I don't think we can use it on this podcast.
[57:50] Speaker 2: Okay, got it, got it? Wait, never mind, So you
[57:55] Speaker 2: said that dog stayed treed for hours?
[57:58] Speaker 1: Yes? That this is again where video just doesn't really
[58:03] Speaker 1: allow you to tell the whole story. We started that
[58:06] Speaker 1: day on the track of a Magnum Tom like one
[58:10] Speaker 1: that we didn't think we were gonna find right and
[58:13] Speaker 1: they were running it, and I mean McClain was like, hey,
[58:18] Speaker 1: this might happen, and we were going into good country.
[58:22] Speaker 1: Every time that you're there with them there the dogs
[58:27] Speaker 1: are going in the direction. They're like, well, boy, if
[58:29] Speaker 1: they get over there, it's gonna be tough. Or man,
[58:33] Speaker 1: if they go that way, we're in the chips. And
[58:36] Speaker 1: so last day, find a big track. Dogs are running
[58:40] Speaker 1: it and I go, we'll tell me about the direction,
[58:43] Speaker 1: and I think they're gonna say, oh, Clay, it's gonna
[58:48] Speaker 1: be really tough for them to catch that line going
[58:50] Speaker 1: that way. And they go, this is great, this is fantastic.
[58:54] Speaker 1: They're going the right way. And it's like mid morning,
[58:57] Speaker 1: so we got plenty of time. A lot of times
[58:59] Speaker 1: you just run out of daylight. You just you just
[59:02] Speaker 1: trail it, trail it, trail it, trail it, and it
[59:04] Speaker 1: gets dark and your dogs are still running. You got
[59:06] Speaker 1: to call them off. And so it's it's mid morning.
[59:09] Speaker 1: We're running a big line track, bigger than the ones
[59:13] Speaker 1: like they were like, you'll you'll shoot this one, Clay,
[59:16] Speaker 1: you know, I mean, that was the idea. And as
[59:20] Speaker 1: we're going, we're like seeing the lions tracks and the dogs.
[59:24] Speaker 2: And you can tell it's big because of a big
[59:26] Speaker 2: track just and the distance between the steps. R.
[59:28] Speaker 1: Yes, yes, they they can just glance at the track
[59:33] Speaker 1: and like tell you the you know what that dude
[59:36] Speaker 1: had for breakfast, you know, I mean, it's unbelievable. And
[59:40] Speaker 1: so as we're going, it was like fate and we
[59:46] Speaker 1: couldn't show it in the film. It just it just
[59:49] Speaker 1: was too already capture a female crossed that lion's the
[59:53] Speaker 1: big lions track and uh and the dogs turned and
[59:59] Speaker 1: I think actually might have gone backwards on the female,
[1:00:05] Speaker 1: even the best dogs in the world, but Whalon broke
[1:00:11] Speaker 1: off and just drifted into no man's land. And so
[1:00:16] Speaker 1: we actually followed the dogs and McLain immediately smelled a rat.
[1:00:21] Speaker 1: He was like, something's wrong. He's like, they're not doing
[1:00:24] Speaker 1: it right. And then he sees the female track and
[1:00:26] Speaker 1: sees they went the wrong way, and we spent a
[1:00:29] Speaker 1: bunch of time going down to them, and Dustin from
[1:00:35] Speaker 1: Arizona was with us, Dustin Clark, and he looks at
[1:00:38] Speaker 1: his garment and he says, mclan whalon is like two
[1:00:44] Speaker 1: miles away showing treat and we were we thought maybe
[1:00:48] Speaker 1: it was an error on the GPS. Who it just
[1:00:52] Speaker 1: the likelihood of this dog treeing the line by himself.
[1:00:56] Speaker 1: And I was like, was it a good dog? And
[1:00:58] Speaker 1: Dustin's like, man, it's one of my best I was
[1:01:00] Speaker 1: like really, It was like, do you think it's treated?
[1:01:02] Speaker 1: And he said he was like, who knows. I think
[1:01:05] Speaker 1: he wanted to it's treating that he was being. He
[1:01:10] Speaker 1: was being reasonable, and it's like hard to say, well,
[1:01:13] Speaker 1: the dog is so far away that we almost didn't
[1:01:17] Speaker 1: go to it. I mean, that's what it felt like.
[1:01:20] Speaker 1: But we finally get the dogs gathered back up from
[1:01:23] Speaker 1: kind of going the wrong way on this track, and
[1:01:28] Speaker 1: I remember it was late in the afternoon and we
[1:01:31] Speaker 1: could have it would have been way easier to just
[1:01:33] Speaker 1: go back to the truck, and McLean said, what do
[1:01:35] Speaker 1: you want to do? And I was like, well, I
[1:01:37] Speaker 1: want to go see what that dog's got. I want
[1:01:40] Speaker 1: to keep going, and he said okay, and so we
[1:01:44] Speaker 1: head off and go on a multi mile very treacherous
[1:01:50] Speaker 1: you know, like up this canyon and across and down
[1:01:53] Speaker 1: and back up, and the dogs still treated. And we
[1:01:58] Speaker 1: think it's possible that it's got that big male treat.
[1:02:03] Speaker 1: It's possible. Yeah, that's what I thought. Anyway, these guys
[1:02:06] Speaker 1: were looking at their garments and I think they kind
[1:02:09] Speaker 1: of had it figured out what had happened. They just
[1:02:11] Speaker 1: it's like they're playing chess and I'm just kind of
[1:02:13] Speaker 1: like watching the game board, don't really know exactly what's
[1:02:16] Speaker 1: going on. And when we got to about one hundred
[1:02:21] Speaker 1: and two hundred yards from the tree, we could hear
[1:02:23] Speaker 1: the dogs. By this time, all the other dogs went
[1:02:26] Speaker 1: to join Whalen, that English red and so that you know,
[1:02:30] Speaker 1: all the dogs are going, and we know they've got
[1:02:32] Speaker 1: a lion tread. And McLain is like, I think it's
[1:02:36] Speaker 1: that female. And so we get down there and sure enough,
[1:02:40] Speaker 1: and when you look at her in the tree, you
[1:02:42] Speaker 1: can see how slender she is. I mean, she actually
[1:02:46] Speaker 1: has a feminine kind of face, you know what I mean,
[1:02:51] Speaker 1: just like the lines on smaller head, smaller feet. She
[1:02:56] Speaker 1: was very nervous. Those males would just sit up in
[1:02:59] Speaker 1: the tree and just kind of them.
[1:03:00] Speaker 2: Yeah, they seemed the tom seemed unfazed.
[1:03:03] Speaker 1: They were just they were just sitting up there, just
[1:03:06] Speaker 1: they didn't care. That female was just constantly on edge,
[1:03:10] Speaker 1: just kind of act like she and she ended up jumping.
[1:03:12] Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, did.
[1:03:13] Speaker 1: The dogs chase her when she Yeah, we we tried
[1:03:16] Speaker 1: to catch most of the dogs back, you know, but
[1:03:19] Speaker 1: they actually, yeah, they actually chased her and treat her
[1:03:23] Speaker 1: just like one hundred yards away. And then we gathered
[1:03:25] Speaker 1: up all the dogs and took out.
[1:03:27] Speaker 2: And you said, you know, this animal is legal to take,
[1:03:29] Speaker 2: but we're not gonna yep, And I think I think
[1:03:31] Speaker 2: you've covered it well enough. It just just to be clear,
[1:03:34] Speaker 2: you wouldn't take a female, because.
[1:03:37] Speaker 1: So the only lion that is illegal to take in
[1:03:41] Speaker 1: the current structure is you cannot shoot a female with kittens.
[1:03:46] Speaker 1: And typically a female is gonna tree with her kittens, okay,
[1:03:51] Speaker 1: if she's got kittens. That's the way I understand it.
[1:03:54] Speaker 1: And and in lion hunters in general are not gonna
[1:03:58] Speaker 1: shoot a female. I mean, they're just it's kind of
[1:04:00] Speaker 1: the code of the West.
[1:04:02] Speaker 2: Because, like you said, the reproductive potential of that cat.
[1:04:05] Speaker 1: Right, and in most places there's the quotas, the female quotas,
[1:04:08] Speaker 1: and there has been so I mean, these these regulations
[1:04:12] Speaker 1: create culture inside the states, and so there's been female
[1:04:15] Speaker 1: quotas all over the place. So for generations it's been
[1:04:19] Speaker 1: not okay to shoot a female, or you know, you
[1:04:22] Speaker 1: kind of get I mean, people do because the female
[1:04:24] Speaker 1: quotas get met, right, But it's like, don't shoot a female.
[1:04:27] Speaker 1: I mean the guys that are serious pretty much are
[1:04:29] Speaker 1: saying that there will be exceptions. I mean, maybe you're
[1:04:32] Speaker 1: with a kid, or maybe you have some reason to
[1:04:34] Speaker 1: want to take in the whole female, and I don't
[1:04:37] Speaker 1: that could happen and be legit, but in general, guys
[1:04:40] Speaker 1: are after the males.
[1:04:40] Speaker 2: Sure. Okay, last question, So looking back, you decided to
[1:04:47] Speaker 2: pass that first cat. Yes, if you had to do
[1:04:50] Speaker 2: it again, would you change your mind?
[1:04:53] Speaker 1: Well, no, I would do it just the same. But
[1:04:57] Speaker 1: would I have liked to have taken that cat? Yeah?
[1:05:02] Speaker 1: If if I had, If I wasn't with these guys
[1:05:07] Speaker 1: that were so knowledgeable and I respected so much and
[1:05:13] Speaker 1: had such strong opinions on the deal, I mean I
[1:05:18] Speaker 1: could see a scenario where I was with different people
[1:05:20] Speaker 1: that would have just been like, shoot that one man,
[1:05:22] Speaker 1: that's the best one we're gonna get. This is awesome.
[1:05:25] Speaker 1: I mean, I think to a lot of people, to
[1:05:29] Speaker 1: a lot of line hunters, that would have been like,
[1:05:31] Speaker 1: what you the best of what you expected? You understand?
[1:05:35] Speaker 1: I mean so, but again, you're you're a product of
[1:05:40] Speaker 1: the context that you're in. And I was these people's guest,
[1:05:43] Speaker 1: and they told me Hunter, Yeah, what's not on film
[1:05:46] Speaker 1: is that Hunter and McLain both were like, Clay, take
[1:05:49] Speaker 1: that shoot that cat. They were like, do what you want.
[1:05:54] Speaker 1: I mean, and yeah, I mean they were They were like, yeah,
[1:05:58] Speaker 1: if you want to shoot that cat, you can, right,
[1:06:01] Speaker 1: I mean, it's legal. Like they know what's happening, and
[1:06:05] Speaker 1: I think they knew that the chances of us treating
[1:06:08] Speaker 1: a bigger one were slim slim. Yeah, and so uh
[1:06:14] Speaker 1: but I could tell they they they didn't. I mean
[1:06:19] Speaker 1: I don't. I don't want to put the blame on them.
[1:06:21] Speaker 1: I made the decision, sure, because I mean they told
[1:06:24] Speaker 1: McClain told me. He was like, you do whatever you want.
[1:06:27] Speaker 2: But I was like, kind of taking your cues from
[1:06:30] Speaker 2: him one.
[1:06:31] Speaker 1: Hundred percent, which I would. I think, you know, somebody
[1:06:35] Speaker 1: new to hunting or I mean, that's what you do,
[1:06:38] Speaker 1: you know, I mean, when you're with people, you know,
[1:06:42] Speaker 1: I guess other parts of life are like this, But
[1:06:45] Speaker 1: in the hunting world, I feel like there's this hierarchy
[1:06:49] Speaker 1: of knowledge kind of on any hunt, and there's usually
[1:06:52] Speaker 1: somebody that's the de facto leader, just based upon their experience,
[1:06:59] Speaker 1: the respect they have with the group, and I mean
[1:07:02] Speaker 1: I kind of typically we kind of hat tip to
[1:07:05] Speaker 1: the to the leader, right, you know, well.
[1:07:08] Speaker 2: They've got a long history and legacy in that region
[1:07:11] Speaker 2: for what they do. Yeah, well great, that's all the
[1:07:15] Speaker 2: questions I've got.
[1:07:16] Speaker 1: Man, I thank you guys so much for watching Meat
[1:07:20] Speaker 1: Eaters twelve and twenty six. We've got ten more films
[1:07:24] Speaker 1: coming out this year. Two of them will be with
[1:07:27] Speaker 1: me and Bear John and the rest of the team,
[1:07:32] Speaker 1: I mean, Brent Scott, some Yiannis has more. There's a
[1:07:36] Speaker 1: bunch of really great films that are coming out. And
[1:07:40] Speaker 1: there was a little bit of a snaff foo on
[1:07:43] Speaker 1: the release of this one. For the first five hours
[1:07:47] Speaker 1: that this line film was out, we actually had the
[1:07:50] Speaker 1: wrong version of the film up on YouTube, so we
[1:07:54] Speaker 1: replaced it late on the first night. It's kind of
[1:07:58] Speaker 1: a bummer, Yeah, that happened. But the current film that's
[1:08:01] Speaker 1: up is the is the one to watch. If you
[1:08:03] Speaker 1: watched it in the first five hours you would have
[1:08:06] Speaker 1: seen a film with no narration. And I mean I
[1:08:11] Speaker 1: watched part of it.
[1:08:12] Speaker 2: So did you.
[1:08:13] Speaker 1: I mean it kind of made sense. Yeah, it was
[1:08:15] Speaker 1: just kind of odd, long musical pauses.
[1:08:19] Speaker 2: Yeah, you kind of fill in the blanks with your emotions.
[1:08:22] Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. I had a couple of people
[1:08:27] Speaker 1: be like, they were like, man, that was awesome, and
[1:08:30] Speaker 1: I was like, maybe I shouldn't talk, but no, it
[1:08:35] Speaker 1: means it means the world does that. Everybody watches what
[1:08:37] Speaker 1: we do. I mean, we would never take that for granted,
[1:08:40] Speaker 1: and and and just what I mean, every time I
[1:08:46] Speaker 1: relive some of these moments, I mean, I'm just grateful
[1:08:49] Speaker 1: to be an American sportsman and I want to be responsible.
[1:08:52] Speaker 1: I want to be knowledgeable, I want to be ethical.
[1:08:54] Speaker 1: I want to to steward this opportunity that we have
[1:08:58] Speaker 1: in modern times to be the caretakers of wildlife and
[1:09:02] Speaker 1: wild places and the culture of American hunting, which is deeply,
[1:09:07] Speaker 1: deeply part of our national identity, which we just have
[1:09:14] Speaker 1: to foster in the coming days because you know, I
[1:09:17] Speaker 1: think I think hunting and being actively engaged in while
[1:09:21] Speaker 1: in wild places is it's good for society. It's good.
[1:09:28] Speaker 1: You know, Teddy Roosevelt believed, you know, his strenuous life doctrine.
[1:09:33] Speaker 1: He believed that, uh that to to go and test
[1:09:38] Speaker 1: yourself in the in the wilds was essential to the
[1:09:43] Speaker 1: national character, you know, And I think there's part of
[1:09:48] Speaker 1: that that's that's probably true. Not everybody in the world
[1:09:51] Speaker 1: gets to do what we do. And whether it's going
[1:09:53] Speaker 1: turkey hunting in your backyard or going on a lion
[1:09:59] Speaker 1: hunting utah or an el khunt, whatever version of your
[1:10:03] Speaker 1: excursion into the wild, whatever version that is, is awesome,
[1:10:08] Speaker 1: whether you're squirrel hunting or small game hunting or white
[1:10:10] Speaker 1: tail hunting. And I'll never we get to do some
[1:10:14] Speaker 1: cool stuff, and I realize we're kind of anomalies in
[1:10:18] Speaker 1: a way, kind of propped up by I mean, this
[1:10:22] Speaker 1: is my job working for Meat Eater, so I realize
[1:10:25] Speaker 1: I get to see a lot of cool things. But
[1:10:28] Speaker 1: my favorite things in the world to do are right
[1:10:31] Speaker 1: here within thirty minute drive in my house. And that's
[1:10:35] Speaker 1: the truth. So thank you so much for watching this
[1:10:40] Speaker 1: twelve and twenty six podcast. The companion series to Meat
[1:10:45] Speaker 1: Eaters twelve and twenty six films

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